Are Video Games getting easier?

[crazypsyko666]

In general, yes. Play MW1/2 on veteran, then play COD1 on veteran. The difference is obvious. RPGs are a mixed bag, some are getting dumber and easier (ME1 vs. ME2, Shepard dies when getting smacked by a geth prime, in ME2 he dies from about four or five rockets to the face.)

 

[Crops]

Games are more forgiving.

-Saving around every corner and before/after every challenge.
-You can take more hits before you die.
-3D makes platform jumping a bit easier to fail at, they compensate with bigger platforms and characters latching onto edges.
-If you die, you just need to replay 5 minutes or so, rather than the entire game.
-Hit the glowing spot.
-If you can't figure the above out, the game tells you to hit the glowing spot.

Other than that, access to the internet has made games a lot easier;

-If you're stuck, there's youtube.
-If you're still stuck, google for a guide.
-Before the game is even out, people will post every possible glitch and exploit for invincibility or an extremely easy time online.

And of course there are a lot of games that "rely heavily on/are designed for multiplayer". Those games only have a singleplayer campaign to kill some time when your internet is down.


...

Achievements and Trophies were added to give replay value to games that have no replay value of their own. If you really need a 'locked' Icon to tell you to go challenge yourself, it means the game isn't challenging you.
And there are plenty of achievement/trophy guides as well.

 

[Fingolfin High-King of the Noldor]

Yeah I think so. Some of the classic arcade games seem ridiculous to me. But I am a multiplayer guy anyway.

 

[Jesus Phish]

I gave up playing Dead Space on the hard mode about two hours in when I had 4 shots left and two necromorphs to kill. I realized, if the rest of the game is like this I haven't got a hope.

Maybe I'll go back once I beat it on normal. MW2 on vetern was hard and tiresome at some parts. It's a good thing that games might have easier settings though. It means they sell more, the people who make them get more money and make more games. Demon Souls isn't going to start a trend of stupidly hard games, nor streamline it into mainstream.

 

[Sylveria]

Quite true. We aren't getting better at games, we aren't really getting worse at them. They are just designed differantly. As I said above, most of the sense of games being easier is due to the save function. A game is seen as harder when it is more frustrating. When death means a minor inconveniance, it doesn't seem as hard as when death sends you back the the very begining of the game. If you consider difficulty as a function of complexity, then modern games are WAY more difficult then older games.

Oh I'll definitely concede games are more complicated/complex now. Like I said, the average current gen controller has 10x the buttons of what I started on, a NES. But the game holds your hand more now. If you die, you go back to a save, which even that has become rather "harsh". Just look at my favorite example shitty game design, FF XIII. If you die in that game, you don't even go back to a save. You get reset to like 50yards away from the monster that just killed you and you can either try again or run away. Compare that to Mario 3 which I oddly enough was playing yesterday. If the boss of the castle stomps on your face, you start the whole level over and God forbid you used a cloud to skip a level and didn't enter a pipe or something.

 

[The Night Shade]

yes they are getting easier but maybe is because of the save-estates and the overall gameplay of the new games comparing them to the old ones

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

Yeah. But to be completely honest I enjoy them more than the "Hard Core Classic" games.

I think the best level of difficulty was around the Super Metroid era.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Yes games are definitely getting easier. I remember how unforgiving Mario was and now we have regenerating health.

1) Mario's actually pretty easy by platformer standards. You should be able to rack up 17 or so spare lives in, say, Super Mario 3 without too much difficulty. Though I'm sure it's harder when you're a little kid. Compare Mario to something like the Ghouls 'n Ghosts series.

2) Mario's a platformer, not a shooter. The mechanics of the two genres are so different that any difficulty comparison would simply be inappropriate. Is a jig-saw puzzle harder than solitaire? Health regeneration doesn't do anything for you when it takes 1 or 2 hits to kill you, and you can die by falling in bottomless pits. FPSes and platformers are entirely different things that are only both under the banner of "video games" because they both have the player press buttons to make things on the screen move. That's pretty much all they have in common.

I would argue that we are getting more games that try to take players through a complete experience, rather than, "oh man, I only got to level four.

 

[alucard1997]

it seems to me like it's US that are getting smarter. If we want a real challenge, we need to start upping the difficulty

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

*Plays Mainstream Title #245*

I believe they are getting easier...

*Plays Demon's Souls*

Games are hard man, really hard.

Demon's souls isn't that hard.
As far as roguelike RPGs go it's fairly forgiving.

I still have nightmares of that time I tried to play nethack.

 

[ottenni]

I don;t know about that. I friend and i have been going back and playing some of the shooters from out childhood, and holy crap they are easy. Even on the highest difficulty they are a walk in the park. All you need to do to clear a room is fire a shot and walk around a corner and wait for the AI to walk around it one by one. These days the AI at least has some self preservation instincts, and that makes for a huge difference.

 

[Dexiro]

On first thought, yes. On second thought, hell no!

Games HAVE gotten easier but we're not slipping further down the scale. Round about the N64 generation we switched from "nintendo-hard" to the more fair difficulties we know today.

Since then they aren't getting much easier though, i actually can't remember any ps1/n64 games that are harder than games I've played recently.

 

[Darzen]

as gamers we evolve.puzzles become less puzzling the more they repeat in seprate games.we expect ambushes in FPS and RPG games to the point of which we can almost see it coming.we are evolving and becoming more skilled but the games are staying the same.

 

[Weaver]

*Plays Mainstream Title #245*

I believe they are getting easier...

*Plays Demon's Souls*

Games are hard man, really hard.

Demon's souls isn't that hard.
As far as roguelike RPGs go it's fairly forgiving.

I still have nightmares of that time I tried to play nethack.

haha, I remember the advanced graphics labs at my University had nethack installed on them.
Good times.

 

[xbeaker]

Ok, consider this.. I can't really get my girlfriend to play anything on the 360. These games have all been pretty much universally too difficult for her. So much so that she is reluctant to even try a new game. But she will happily pick up any NES game... "Because they are easier"

Older games may be harder to get to the end of, but modern games are more difficult to just play. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but taken as a whole I think this is true.

 

[Nick Holmgren]

*trys to beat LoZ but fails to find first dungeon* *beats wind waker in about 5 hours minus the sailing* Yeah, newer games are easy as shit.Also CoD MW VS Half Life. Normal in HL was about as hard as vet in CoD cause of reneging health.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Much easier. Find any old 2D game, Sonic, Mario, Contra, etc. Count the amount of times you died. Put in God of War or something similar, count the times you die. Much less isn't it?

Yes and it affects my abilities..when I was young I'd complete Sonic 2 no problem, now Sonic 2 no saves is really hard

 

[maninahat]

I think it is better say that games have got less difficult - meaning that games these days now have much better quality control, so games that are impossibly hard simply through dodgy programming are becoming rarer.

The invention of game saves has made everything easier - but the only reason they weren't instituted in earlier games was because of the technological limitations.

 

[Dreey]

Nope, and peoples arguments that contra and those games didn't have saves and checkpoints is a flawed argument. Mostly because videogames has evolved into something more than just stupid kill everyone kind of game(mostly, there are some nostalgic ones that does that still).

Comparing modern games with those old ones is like comparing a movie with an IQ test.
It's not a bad movie just because theres no test every five minutes that you have to score a certain amount to continue.

Besides, most modern games is more about you going through a journey rather than beating an invincible foe.

Would anyone here play any modern game if you couldn't get past the prologue without being a god of reflexes and multitasking?

 

[Super Toast]

Not easier, just more accessible.

People couldn't complete Pacman not because it was a particularly hard game, but because they's had no experience in playing a Pacman-esque game. Try sticking someone from the Pacman era on Halo 3, see how they fare.

Friended because of your avatar.

OT: No. A million times no. The level of difficulty in games has stayed about the same since the SNES days, and that's where it should stay.